Sunday, 27 February 2011

The Last Highgate Vampire Interview

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On the morning of 27 February 1970 a banner headline across the newspapers — "Does A Wampyr Walk In Highgate?" — quickly followed by appearances on television and in a host of periodicals made Bishop Seán Manchester a household name where the Highgate Vampire case was concerned. For more than forty years he gave interviews and contributed to countless film documentaries about his mysterious investigations that lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s until the case was finally closed and its files archived.

Now Bishop Seán Manchester has given his final interview on the matter. He spoke for over two hours as three cameras recorded the historic occasion for posterity on the forty-first anniversary of the time he first brought to public attention the existence of a contagion at Highgate Cemetery. The Hampstead & Highgate Express, 27 February 1970, filled its front page with his startling revelations, albeit misquoting him and misrepresenting another exorcist, Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith, in their article written by editor Gerald Isaaman. Since then the bishop has contributed to literally hundreds of interviews and television documentaries about his mysterious investigations spanning a period of no less than thirteen years. Now he feels that everything there is to say about the case has been said. He finds himself answering the same questions he was being asked four decades ago, and while Bishop Manchester fully understands the enduring fascination the case holds ─ he wrote his book about his experiences to satisfy this need ─ the time has now come to draw a line under the topic.

Despite that day in February 1970 becoming a defining moment in his life, Bishop Seán Manchester believes enough is enough and wants no longer to talk about it. In an opening chapter of The Highgate Vampire back in the previous century he wrote:

“The reality I once experienced exists no longer and although its memories are the most potent that I possess, they now seem so far away ─ possibly because next to the hunger to experience a thing, there is no stronger hunger than to forget.”

He had informed the public on 27 February 1970 that demonic disturbances and manifestations in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery were vampiric. Shortly afterwards he appeared on television on 13 March 1970 to repeat his theory. The suspected tomb was located and an exorcism performed in August 1970. This proved ineffective as the hauntings and animal deaths continued. Indeed, they multiplied. All manner of people were by now jumping on the bandwagon; including film-makers, rock musicians and sundry publicity-seekers. Most were frightened off. Some who interloped became fascinated by the black arts with disastrous consequences. In the meantime, Bishop Manchester and his colleagues pursued the principal source of the contagion at Highgate until it was properly exorcised in the correct manner in 1974. The nightmare journey, however, continued for another eight years, witnessing the bishop entering further into a nether region inhabited by terrifying corporeal manifestations.

.“Ever since I became aware that Highgate Cemetery was the reputed haunt of a vampire, the investigations and activities of Seán Manchester commanded my attention. I became convinced that, more than anyone else, he knew the full story of the Highgate Vampire.” — Peter Underwood, The Ghost Club Society, London, England“

.“I am very impressed by the body of scholarship you have created. Seán Manchester is undoubtedly the father of modern vampirological research.” — John Godl, paranormal researcher and writer, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

.“Seán Manchester is the most celebrated vampirologist of the twentieth century.” — Shaun Marin, reviewer and sub-editor, Encounters magazine, England

.“The Highgate Vampire will certainly be read in a hundred years time, two hundred years time, three hundred years time — in short, for as long as mankind is interested in the supernatural. It has the most genuine power to grip. Once you have started to read it, it is virtually impossible to put it down.” — Lyndall Mack (aka Jennie Gray), Udolpho (magazine of the Gothic Society), Chislehurst, Kent, England

.“Seán Manchester, the most authentic vampire hunter in the world today, penetrated the very heart of the mystery whose necrogenic setting has such impressionistic power that within the shades of dark ebon the most disbelieving sceptic will witness something spectral in the ghostly whiteness of moonbeams shining on marble tombs.” — Devendra P Varma, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

.“Seán Manchester is, unsurprisingly, very well read in both classical and more recent sources on vampires and vampirism, and cites them with great authority.” — Joe McNally, contributing editor, Fortean Times magazine, England

.“His lectures at universities and organisations led to my inviting him to address members of the Ghost Club Society which he duly did. We met at that time at the Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury and the President of the Vampire Research Society arrived, suitably attired, and gave a memorable and in many ways remarkable lecture. Certainly we had had nothing like it before and have never had anything like it since; not a few members at the crowded meeting revised their opinion on vampires and vampirism after that evening.” — Peter Underwood, President, The Ghost Club Society, London, England

.“One of the most notable figures to visit the haunted site under cover of darkness was Seán Manchester, who has been called one of Britain’s foremost exorcists.” — Craig Miller, associate editor, Fate magazine, Minnesota, USA

.“First thrust into the public eye in the Seventies after a spate of gruesome reports about North London’s Highgate Cemetery, Seán Manchester is now acknowledged as a serious vampirologist with a God-given mission.” — Frances Hubbard, features’ writer, IPC magazines, London, England

“The shadow of a stone angel stole across Seán Manchester’s face as he laid out the tools of his trade: old Italianate crucifixes, holy water ... Traditional instruments of protection. … Risking life and soul is all part of a night’s work for Manchester … the founding president of the Vampire Research Society.” — Beverley d’Silva, features’ writer, Sunday Times magazine, London, England

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“Seán Manchester’s Vampire Research Society grew out of his previous leadership role in an occult investigation bureau. The society investigates all aspects of ‘supernatural vampire phenomena,’ a task that has led to a variety of research projects, including the famous Highgate Vampire.” — J Gordon Melton, chronicler of vampire topics, Santa Barbara, USA..

.The mass vampire hunt at Highgate Cemetery on 13 March 1970, following reports in local and national newspapers, plus a television interview with various witnesses earlier that evening on British television, led to a spate of amateur vampire hunters inflicting themselves on Highgate Cemetery with home-made stakes, crosses, garlic, holy water, but very little knowledge about how to deal with the suspected undead if they encountered it. Bishop Manchester had made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00pm to request the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy the investigation already in progress. Not everyone heeded his words. Over the following months a wide variety of independent vampire hunters descended on the graveyard — only to be frightened off by its eerie atmosphere and what they believed might have been the vampire. Some were quickly arrested by police patrolling the area. The public were advised that a full-scale investigation was taking place. Individual efforts by those merely seeking thrills, however, served only to endanger all concerned and frustrate the official hunt.

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Simon Wiles and John White armed themselves with a crucifix and a sharpened stake, and set off to see if they could locate the vampire’s tomb. Like others who followed in their wake, they were arrested by police who found their rucksack and its contents: an eight inch long wooden stake, sharpened to a point. Mr White later explained at Clerkenwell Court: “Legend has it that if one meets a vampire, one drives a stake through its heart.” He was wearing a crucifix round his neck and Mr Wiles had one in his pocket. They were eventually discharged.

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Thus began a trend. A 25-year-old history teacher from Billericay, Alan Blood, also descended on Highgate after seeing the Today report, but he, at least, had the good sense not to enter the infamous graveyard. Though described by the Evening News, 14 March 1970, as a “vampire expert,” Mr Blood, in a later interview given to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 20 March 1970, admitted that he was no such thing. “I have taken an interest in the black arts since boyhood, but I’m by no means an expert on vampires,” he told them. Following a drink in the local pub, Alan Blood joined a crowd of onlookers outside the cemetery’s north gate, but he did not enter.

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The bishop (on the Today programme, 13 March 1970) warned one particular amateur vampire hunter, who had appeared on the same programme as one of several witnesses, to leave things he did not understand alone. Apparently he had received “a horrible fright” a few weeks earlier when he allegedly caught sight of the vampire by the north gate of Highgate Cemetery and immediately wrote to his local newspaper about the experience, concluding with these words: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” (Letters to the Editor, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970). In the following month he revealed to the media that he had seen something at the north gate that was “evil” and that it “looked like it had been dead for a long time” (as told by him to Sandra Harris on the Today programme). Bishop Seán Manchester gave a warning on television that this man’s declared intention of staking the vampire alone went “against my explicit wish for his own safety.”

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Police searching the cemetery arrested the amateur vampire hunter five months later. He was found to be in possession of a wooden stake and a crucifix. Charged with being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose, he was later released because, in the strict sense of the wording, Highgate Cemetery is not an enclosed area. The lone intruder had made his television debut five months earlier, employing on that occasion the name on his birth certificate. Now he adopted a pseudonym which appeared in many (but not all) of the newspaper reports covering his arrest and court appearance. When the American vampire aficionado Donald F Glut came to write his book True Vampires of History (1971) he referred only to "Allan Farrow who was arrested for trespassing in a London Graveyard."

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Kev Demant jumped the gun by two decades with his "Last Highgate Vampire Interview" in Udolpho magazine. He conducted his interview with Bishop Seán Manchester, who was gradually persuaded and hesitatingly consented, in writing. The bishop's schedule prevented a face to face interview, which obliged Mr Demant to ask questions on the magazine editor’s behalf via correspondence and the bishop answering them through the same medium.

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“This is certainly a strange way of conducting an interview,”Kev Demant wrote on 20 February 1992. “Jennie sets the questions, you do all the hard work and I get my name to the results! … I hope I can do you justice.” A week later, having received Bishop Seán Manchester's answers, Mr Demant replied: “You have not balked at the more ‘difficult’ questions.”

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When he saw Jennie Gray’s expurgated outcome in print, however, Kev Demant was somewhat less enthusiastic when he wrote on 27 February 1992:

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“To be honest, I don’t know what to feel about the article, a somewhat sanitised version of the material submitted. Many of your responses have been truncated while my own contribution has been edited, certain sentences have been rewritten (badly in my opinion and without my consent) and ultimately censored. … I wonder what all these aesthetes, decadents, intellectuals and yuppies who constitute the readership are going to make of it all!”.

It did not take long to discover what they made of it all. Within a month all six hundred copies sold out. Publishing editor Jennie Gray ordered an unprecedented extra hundred copies. Her now defunct specialist magazine had reached its peak at this point. On December 14th, Kev Demant wrote to Bishop Manchester: .

“Somehow I think it is your prestigious interview which had much to do with the favourable response.”.The final interview would actually take place many years later in the following century..

Bishop Seán Manchester, an opponent of the suffocating influence of modernism and the dictatorial liberal elite in both secular and ecclesial life, will continue to make broadcast contributions where it is in the public interest or where an opportunity to address an injustice arises. He will not, however, be willing to contribute any further media interviews about the Highgate Vampire case he investigated from 1969 to 1982. His final interview was transmitted at 8.00pm Pacific Time / 11.00pm Eastern Time on The Conspiracy Show (Vision TV, Canada) on 1 April 20011. Also included in the programme were paranormal commentators Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Joe Nickell and Neil Arnold.